President Obama yesterday tried to explain the shocking election of a Republican senator in overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts, insisting he understands voters’ anger — even while admitting he lost touch with the American people.

“If there’s one thing that I regret this year, it’s that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us, that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values,” said Obama.

“And that, I do think, is a mistake of mine. I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know, this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here . . . that people will get it,” the president told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.

Later, he insisted, “What I haven’t always been successful at doing is breaking through the noise and speaking directly to the American people in a way that during the campaign you could do.”

But despite that sentiment, Obama didn’t seem to be at a loss for communication in his first year in the White House.

According to CBS News, he held 42 news conferences, gave 158 interviews and made 411 speeches and remarks. That included 52 addresses or statements on health-care reform efforts alone. And the number of interviews was far more than any of his recent predecessors during the first year of their terms.

Occasionally sounding defensive, Obama spoke to ABC News the day after Republican Scott Brown scored an upset in the special election for the Senate seat that had been held by Ted Kennedy for almost 47 years.

The election was a debilitating loss for the president, whose party had held a filibuster-proof, 60-40 supermajority in the Senate.

Brown now gives Republicans a crucial 41st vote to block the Democrats’ plans for health-care reform.

His victory was widely seen as a referendum on the policies of Obama, who took office one year ago yesterday.

But Obama maintained he was right to pursue a health-care fix. He claimed it wasn’t a “personal hobby horse,” and regretted only that it didn’t go “faster.”

“There is no doubt that that is something that we had to do,” he said.

As for the voters, he said, “I think that, you know, what they’ve ended up seeing is this feeling of remoteness and detachment where, you know, there’s these technocrats up here, these folks who are making decisions.

“Maybe some of them are good, maybe some aren’t, but do they really get us and what we’re going through?

“And I think that I can do a better job of that, and partly because I do believe that we’re in a stronger position now than we were in a year ago,” Obama said.

It was one of Obama’s few acknowledgments of mistakes, as he maintained that things are going in the right direction, even if slowly.

“The bottom line is this: At the end of this year, I can say honestly that not only has this been the busiest time of my life, but I also think that I’ve never been prouder of the country, and more optimistic about the direction that we can go in the future,” he told Stephanopolous.

He said he was still grappling with a bad situation he inherited from the Bush administration. And he said he saw with “surprise” last week that Democratic candidate Martha Coakley was tanking in the Massachusetts polls.

“Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country,” he said.

“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”